Röyksopp, which literally means “smoke mushroom” in Norwegian and makes me sound like I’m speaking English backwards with a lisp, is a two man group which crawled out of a massive rocky snowbank in northern Europe, also known as Norway, in 1998. This song is from their 3rd album called “Junior” which released in 2009, and their latest album “Senior” came out this year. Also check out the music video to their song What Else is There?

I love the way the video for this song was produced and synced with the music and lyrics, as well as the video game if you recall from the 80’s. I hadn’t heard of this band until recently, although I had seen the music video to their song “Remind Me” at some point a few years ago. In Europe everyone has heard of them, but in the US I think they’re just starting to crack mainstream awareness. I wonder if just having a name with an umlaut vowel (a vowel with two dots above it) scares most Americans away, the same way most Americans tend to not like watching movies with subtitles. Because the name of the band has no recognizable meaning or association in English I think it’s also harder for people to remember, and when it’s told to someone like, “Hey you should check out this band Röyksopp”, I don’t think the listener is going to be able to have anything to associate it with in their mind let alone begin to know how to type the thing in a google search. I think these small heterogeneous linguistic and cultural dynamics have played against them for the last decade, but they are still building fans in the US.

So, since they probably won’t be changing their name soon, if you want to
share them with a friend I recommend just sending them a link instead of trying to tell them their name.

I’ve had this song on a playlist of mine for a while but can’t remember where I got it from. Maybe it was from a Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack I got from somebody. Either way, I remember liking this song but having no idea who sang it. Only today did I realize that all of their songs are good. This is a band I would buy the album from. Their songs are very genuine, about love and life mostly, about the bigger more beautiful things in life. Their fresh new debut album Sigh No More released in the US in February this year and was released late last year in the UK. It has since reached the #1 position in Australia and has already gone double platinum there, the Aussies just eat these guys up. But in the US it also reached #8 on the best album’s of the year list for NPR’s All Songs Considered. So if you like this song, I’d recommend checking out their whole album, I think you’ll be happy you did.

After gathering together as the result of hearing 4 loves songs written by the now frontman Michael Angelakos, Passion Pit took form and released their debut EP “Chunk of Change” in 2008. However their first full length album Manners was released in 2009. You probably already know these guys very well already or have never heard of them. I particularly liked this song of theirs because of the happy teenage sounding PS22 chorus background vocals.

At first you might find the lead vocalist’s voice a little high pitched or strange, but it catches on quick and the beat is too easy to love. Quite a few of their songs have already been featured in movies and TV shows, but I still think a lot of people don’t know about them. I hope to hear more from these guys soon.

Brandon Flowers and I have a lot in common. We both spend lots of time in Las Vegas, we both love music, and we both love Charlize Theron. What can I say? It doesn’t matter how macho of a guy you are, you’d have to be crazy to not want her to break in and rescue you. Of course if you were being held hostage you’d be happy if anyone rescued you, but it’s hard to think of anyone else who you’d love to be rescued by than her. I really love the way this music video is put together. The production quality is great, and the repeated rescuing and unlikely fight scenes makes it dream-like. My guess is that the director of the video wanted to present a dream one of her fans might have had. I could write a lot about this video, but I don’t want to get too deep. I’ll just let it speak for itself.

This is the 8th track on Brandon Flowers’ first solo album “Flamingo” which came out in June this year in the US and will be available in the UK on August 23rd.

From a very young age Mike Grubbs, the frontman for Wakey!Wakey!, began playing the piano for fun. His mother, a piano teacher made him read music early, and instead of playing video games like most of us in our teenage years, he played the piano. Mix in some years of experimenting and releasing some songs and you get Wakey!Wakey!’s first full length album. After listening to a couple songs from Youtube and his website I was impressed and had to share the love. I’m a sucker for good piano and strings, what can I say.

This duo out of New York state started opening for big acts just two years after officially forming the group in 2007. I really like their light beats and full ambient electronic sound. The video and the lyrics make me imagine that they were inspired by taking too many drugs one night while out in a cabin somewhere deep within an Appalachian forest.

Update: Since posting this song I can’t help but keep listening to it again and again. Each time I hear the song I think I enjoy it a little more. It’s not the video, which kind of turned me a little off from it, but rather the song itself, something about the parts of the song when they aren’t singing that I really like. Although, the music video does add some mystery to it that provokes the imagination a bit.

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We love music and music videos and plan to use this site as a way to highlight amazing bands, songs, or music videos that are not so often on the tops of the billboard charts or seldom played on the radio. Bands that you’ll see here will most likely not have million dollar advertising agencies pushing their songs on radio stations and into advertisements; which is probably why you may not have heard many of the songs on this site before.